Winter TV: ‘The Alienist’ (TNT)

Alienist (aka criminal psychologist) Dr. Laszlo Kreizler (Daniel Brühl), New York Times society illustrator John Moore (Luke Evans) and secretary Sara Howard (Dakota Fanning) are recruited to investigate in secret a series of murders of prostitutes in New York City by new police commissioner (and future president) Theodore Roosevelt (Brian Geraghty) in this adaptation of Caleb Carr’s novel set in 1895.

What The Critics Say (Metascore 60)

There’s no shortage of serial killer dramas, and if The Alienist feels familiar, it makes up for it by presenting its story in a striking package. And you won’t want to look away. — Kelly Lawler, USA Today

The Alienist plays like a time-traveling installment of True Detective–Cary Fukunaga was even set to direct at one point and retains an executive producer credit, along with several collaborators from previous incarnations–or a 19th century version of Mindhunter, still delivering in sumptuous period production values and strong ensemble casting what it maybe lacks in freshness. — Dan Fienberg,The Hollywood Reporter

The book had all kinds of novelty going for it in the mid-’90s. The TV show lacks that same capacity to surprise, so it (based on the two episodes TNT gave critics) has to lean much more on its story and characters, which were on the sketchy side to begin with. … The actors are all good, Brühl in particular finding the balance between altruism and obsession, but don’t especially elevate the middling material. (The period setting also forgives the hodgepodge of accents.) — Alan Sepinwall,UPROXX